


Hogwarts Moms Dueling Club

by daylit



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Battle of Hogwarts, Gen, a what-if that got out of hand
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-15
Updated: 2017-02-15
Packaged: 2018-09-24 16:54:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9771821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daylit/pseuds/daylit
Summary: What Molly was up to after all her kids went to school, and how she was able to duel Bellatrix Lestrange.





	

The Hogwarts Express whisks Ginny away when Molly is 43 years old. As Molly watches the train disappear into the countryside, she wonders what she will do next. For the first time in 22 years, she has no children in her home. No one will be thumping about in the bedrooms, conjuring small explosions and disappearing the contents of the pantry. 

She wonders if it will be boring.

And then she discovers that her 12-year-old has stolen the family car.

Molly is a lifelong worrier. Her anxiety is the engine that powers her: through Hogwarts and elopement, through marriage and motherhood. During You-Know-Who’s ascent, as danger multiplied and friends died, Molly took defiant joy in bringing baby after baby into the world, so many rambunctious sons who grow and grow and feel, to Molly, like extensions of her vitality. Then, at last, Molly and Arthur created Ginevra, whom Molly loves almost more than she can bear. She lives through her children and she worries through her children. And without fail, her children find ways to justify her worry, a fact in which she takes a sort of pride, in between fits of exasperation. 

Molly makes her way home from King’s Cross and prepares a cup of tea. She thinks of Gideon and Fabian, whom she remembers as vividly as if they are even now sitting on her couch in the next room, bickering amicably. Gideon and Fabian, who were slain years before Ginny was even born. 

She thinks of Charlie and Bill, who have selected two of the most comically dangerous careers on Earth, as if daring her to stop them. She thinks of George and Fred, hurricanes of destruction, and of Ronald, who arrived at Hogwarts and promptly befriended a boy who is at the very center of constant danger. She thinks of Ginny, with whom she has spent all her days for the entire past year, Ginny whose head still holds vast, secret worlds. She thinks of her bones-deep certainty that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is not truly dead. She thinks of her missing car.

Molly has lived with worry her whole life, and it only makes her more determined.

Forgetting her tea, Molly picks up a quill and writes a letter to Augusta Longbottom. It concludes:  _ What’s next? _

Within an hour, Augusta has Flooed into Molly’s living room, wand in one hand and a series of  _ Daily Prophet _ clippings in the other.

“Your boy’s raising Hell,” she announces, without preamble.

“George,” Molly replies, “or Fred?”

“Ronald. You realize, of course, that this is the early Order days all over again. Those days never actually ended. You-Know-Who never actually died. And now Neville and Ronald are wrapped up with Harry Potter, and Harry Potter is wrapped up with You-Know-Who, and this peacetime can’t last much longer.”

Molly’s throat constricts. She nods.

“Molly, what’s next is  _ everything _ . You’re not going to spend the next decade knitting jumpers and waiting for grandchildren.”

Fire flares within Molly. She says, “I thought of you first, but there must be many of us. Mothers who raised children and prepared them for Hogwarts and sent them off, wondering when You-Know-Who will turn up again.”

Molly pauses. She breathes.  _ I create life. I protect life. _

She tells Augusta, “I want to bring all of us together.”

Augusta seats herself in an armchair and picks up Molly’s forgotten cup of tea. “Let’s get started.”

* * *

At first, the Society is small, convivial. Augusta gets in touch with Sarah Fawley, whose daughter Hannah Abbott is in Ron and Neville’s year. Molly invites over Helena Diggory, who lives nearby. Sarah is a spitfire who befriends Molly instantly. Helena possesses an astounding serenity; she will withhold from conversation for twenty minutes before calmly interjecting a thought that turns the discussion on its head.

They read the  _ Prophet _ assiduously and meet sporadically. Helena devours written accounts of You-Know-Who’s initial rise to power, looking for patterns and weaknesses. Molly invites Arthur’s coworkers in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement to dinner and asks “And how is work?” with feigned airiness. One afternoon, Sarah turns up with a bottle of Firewhisky, and by two o’clock, all four are sitting at Molly’s kitchen table with glasses in hand. 

“An absolute  _ shit _ day,” Sarah is saying, downing a swig from her glass. 

“What happened?” asks Helena, but Sarah diverts.

“And we aren’t  _ getting _ anywhere.” Sarah’s cheeks are flushed; she’s babbling rapidly. “Helena, you keep telling us about when You-Know-Who first, you know, showed up, and it’s like, Grindelwald hadn’t even died  _ that  _ long ago, and still everyone was, like, caught off guard! ‘Oh, look, it’s a bloody Dark wizard taking over Britain, I wish we knew what to do about it!’ Can’t  _ we _ be on guard? Can’t  _ we _ do something? I bet I could curse any one of you into St. Mungo’s.”

Augusta, who has single-handedly consumed half the bottle and seems none the worse for wear, guffaws. “ _ Try _ .”

In an instant, Sarah shoots a curse across the table. Augusta deflects it so promptly that Molly doesn’t understand what’s happened until she sees her shattered mixing bowl on the other side of the kitchen. Sarah bursts into wild, raucous laughter, vibrating with excitement. “ _ Now _ we’re talking.”

Helena and Molly’s eyes meet. They nod. 

A few weeks later, Molly learns Ginny has spent most of her first year at Hogwarts possessed by Tom Riddle. In her mind, she hears Sarah’s boisterous laugh, hungry for a fight, and for a moment, insanely, her lips quirk. She owls Sarah, Helena, and Augusta:  _ I want to learn how to duel. September.  _

* * *

By September, Molly has been to Egypt and back, Sirius Black has broken out of Azkaban, and Helena has shared an extensive list of curses she suggests they practice. Molly owls Tracy Cresswell, whose daughter Angelina is on the Quidditch team with Fred and George. Petite Tracy arrives at her first Society gathering in dragonhide boots and a lacy dress; she instantly wins over the group by nominating several more curses to be added to Helena’s list.

After Sarah accidentally sets Molly’s couch on fire with a stray spell, Molly suggests that the group begin meeting outside. A few months later, on an icy January morning, the women build makeshift trenches in the snow, trading curses across the space in between. Tracy’s backed Sarah into her foxhole; the women are inches apart. Sarah, in a moment that defies logic, forgets the wand in her left fist and swings hard at Tracy with her right, catching her on the shoulder. 

“Bloody hell!” shouts Tracy, almost laughing, and rewards Sarah with a spectacular black eye. 

“Truce, truce!” cries Sarah, but she’s laughing too, and also crying a little. “Sorry about that, I forgot myself.”

“Nah, it’s good for us to get a little crafty, keeps us unpredictable and—” Tracy’s face lights up and she interrupts herself. “I just realized! Calliope Bell would  _ love _ this group.”

* * *

Calliope, it turns out, is a born slugger, with muscular arms that would put Molly’s own Charlie to shame. As the Society practices more hand-to-hand combat, Helena surprises the group with her aptitude for dodging hits and doling out pain. The trick is in her taciturn nature: Sarah snarls, Tracy gets a steely glint in her eye, Molly’s cheeks redden, but Helena’s face is impassive right up until the moment that her fist connects with your body.

For another year, the women find borrowed mornings and afternoons to duel fiercely, share drinks, and discuss the news. When Molly’s children come home for the summer, she cooks and scolds and breathes not a word about the Society, wanting to maintain some sheen of normalcy in their home. 

Asmara Patil is the next recruit. The months of dueling and punching and physical pain have made the women competitive; Augusta has fashioned a “Mum of the Week” medal that started as a joke but now gets treated with a certain reverence. Asmara, like Helena, finds her edge in subtlety; she whispers charms that bring you to your knees before you can comprehend what’s happened. The Society alternates between careful subterfuge and reckless battering; sometimes it feels more like therapeutic catharsis than training.

Helena’s son dies, and Harry tells the world that Voldemort killed him. Two days later, the Society is in Helena’s home, and several things fall into place: that the  _ Prophet _ cannot be trusted, that the patterns they’ve been sensing were real, and that every woman in that room is ready to become a warrior.

* * *

Later in her life, when Molly looks back on the years that follow, they seem like a blur. The Order reconvenes; Molly gazes at old photos of Gideon and Fabian; Percy turns his back on his parents; Arthur has a brush with death. The Society swells. Witches who trade in nursery rhymes and scouring charms become excellent at slamming each other into walls and then magicking away the bruises. Molly’s Patronus is a predatory hawk that swoops into kitchen windows and announces the next time, the next place, the next challenge to surmount.

It’s a bright morning in the autumn of 1996. The leaves on the ground are decaying, and the soil in Molly’s garden has a rich, fecund scent. Molly sends a Patronus to Sarah that is not immediately answered, and she instinctively knows to worry. She glances at her clock, wondering if Sarah is in “mortal peril,” but of course, Sarah isn’t on it. She sends another Patronus to Augusta, hesitates, and decides not to contact anyone else yet. Together, Molly and Augusta Apparate to the Abbotts’ home.

What surprises Molly the most is that there’s no blood. She might have expected a handprint on the wall, or a splatter where a skull was dashed against the fireplace. But there’s only Sarah, lying on the floor as if napping, her ponytail askew beneath her head, her wand in the pocket of her robes. They arrived, they executed her, and they departed. No one in the Order or the Society ever learns why her, or why that day. 

Molly focuses on the fact that all of her children are still breathing and running and making an unbelievable ruckus wherever they happen to be, that her husband is still safe and well. She conjures yet another Patronus and dispatches it to Sarah’s husband. Augusta paces around and around the body. 

“Wand’s still in her pocket,” she notes. It’s the first thing she has said.

“Yes.”

“She didn’t have time to fight.”

“No.”

The sun is very bright, shining patches of warmth on and around where Sarah lies.

“We’ll get faster,” Molly says.

A soft  _ pop _ announces the arrival of Sarah’s husband, who immediately staggers backward as if Stunned. Molly sees his face and suddenly shatters into tears.

* * *

After Sarah’s death, the Society turns its focus to nonverbal spells and wandless magic. Helena recruits Gina Chang, who works for the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Gina tucks her hair behind her ears and talks about channeling emotion, just as you do when conjuring a Patronus. Gina confesses that she cries often, but that she’s learning how to use her sadness in her spellcasting. Gina says she feels like she’s been waiting her whole life to be part of something like the Society. Molly knows what she means.

Molly concentrates on her worry, her grief. Her boys like to tease her, as if her feelings make her weak. 

She pairs off with Asmara, and with her glare alone, Molly makes Asmara’s robes catch fire.

* * *

Sometime after Bill is attacked and mutilated, after George loses an ear, Molly asks, “But what about when we need to kill?”

A rare hush falls over the group.

Tracy mumbles, “Well, there’s the Killing Curse…”

Gina shakes her head. “I doubt anyone in this group would be capable of casting an Unforgivable. And that’s a good thing.”

“So...what…?”

Augusta says quietly, “There are other ways to kill a person.”

They work on disintegration charms, vein-slicing curses, spells that will forcefully smash a person’s head against the walls or floor.

For better or worse, Molly feels like she is capable of anything.

* * *

When the day of the Battle arrives, when every hand on her clock has pointed to “mortal peril” for months, Molly is filled with surreal calm. She feels as if her body has been Transfigured into steel. She  _ will _ protect her family. They will come out of this more alive and vibrant than ever. She will live to see grandchildren, great-grandchildren, so many more babies and wild kids and fumbling teenagers. The way is almost clear: they must simply pass this one last obstacle. 

Patronuses fly fast and thick from one home to another, and the Society converges on Hogwarts. They battle Acromantulas, Death Eaters, and Dementors, and Molly feels coolly detached, unfazed as she dispatches challenger after challenger. The world does not exist outside of her duels; she does not know which of her Society comrades are still alive, or how the battle as a whole is progressing.

The sight of Fred’s dead body changes everything. 

It is her very worst nightmare; it is agony. Molly weeps because she does not know what else to do. She grips her son’s limp torso and cries and cries, her breath ragged and her head pounding. She is dimly aware of her living children and her husband clustered around her, of George’s limbs tangled up in hers as they both hang on to Fred. Right now nothing is more urgent than this loss, this gash in her chest that feels as if it is bleeding away Molly’s own life.

By the time Hagrid appears with Harry’s dead body, Molly is spent. Even as the fighting recommences, Molly focuses mainly on defensive spells, shielding herself, her Society sisters, and her remaining children. Helena, Asmara, and Calliope have all fallen; she does not know when or how. Her only desire is to protect whoever’s left, whoever can be salvaged from this horrific scene.

And then, when a Killing Curse barely misses Ginevra, the open wound in Molly’s chest transforms into pure flame, and Molly knows with perfect clarity that she is about to slay Bellatrix Lestrange.

They duel one-on-one. Molly bites a warning to the others to stay out of the way. She can see in the other woman’s eyes that Bellatrix is astonished by Molly’s skill, that she has made the mistake of thinking that Molly is nothing but a wife and mother, as if that is nothing at all. Bellatrix invokes Fred’s name without comprehending its gravity, like a two-year-old tossing off a swear word just to get a reaction. So Molly shoots back a swear of her own —  _ Not my daughter, you bitch _ — and fires off a curse that paralyzes Bellatrix’s heart. Within moments, Bellatrix is dead.

At the sound of Voldemort’s scream, Molly remembers again the defiant joy she felt during the first war, as she brought new children into her family more quickly than the Death Eaters could extinguish the lives of her existing family. She hears Voldemort’s scream and thinks of the screams of her newborns, of tiny Fred and George wailing their heads off in her and Arthur’s arms. She almost isn’t surprised when Harry appears out of thin air, still breathing.

* * *

Many years later, at a birthday party for their granddaughter Roxanne, Tracy and Molly are relaxing at the kitchen table in the Burrow, the same table where the Society met so many times, long ago.

“You know, I still have a scar from that time you grazed me with a Singeing Spell,” Tracy says conversationally.

“What?” Molly gasps. “Oh no! I’m sorry!”

“Don’t be, it looks brilliant, look here—” Tracy pulls up the sleeve of her robe, where a thin pink scar is visible near her elbow.

Hugo, who has scurried into the kitchen in search of snacks, pauses to gaze at this reveal, his mouth a small pink O. 

“My  _ gran _ gave you that?”

“Your grandmother is quite the talented dueler, young man,” Tracy tells him confidentially.

“I always did find it amazing how you finished off Bellatrix Lestrange.” Ronald has followed his son into the room. His ears turn a little pink. “I mean, no offense, Mum, I just—”

“Wait, wait, wait.” Tracy interrupts. She turns to Molly. “Do you mean to say that you never told your kids about the Society?”

“The what now?” Hugo has dashed out the door and into the garden, but Ron is frozen to the spot, staring at Molly.

“Tracy!” Molly scolds her friend, but she’s smiling in spite of herself, and Ron can tell he’s on to something.

“Oi! George, Gin, Hermione, Harry! Come in the kitchen!”

The four of them pile into the room, sundry grandchildren on their heels. “What is it?” asks Hermione.

Tracy steps in. “Remember that time your mum killed off Voldemort’s favorite Death Eater?”

“Yeah, I think that rings a bell,” says Harry. George is silent, watching his mother.

“Molly,” nudges Tracy. “Tell your children about the Society.”

Tracy doles out mugs of Butterbeer from the pot simmering on the stove, while Molly’s whole brood gathers around her. She’s always avoided thinking about those days, about her clock pointing to “mortal peril,” about codewords and curses, about cold limp bodies on cold hard floors. But now she’s also thinking about Sarah’s uproarious laugh, about Helena’s steady breathing in the midst of heavy combat, about Asmara’s shining eyes as she whispered spells that felled Death Eaters. The danger finally feels far away, but her sisters feel close by, their strength and their magic running through her own veins.

“Well,” Molly begins nervously, “after Ginny started at Hogwarts…”


End file.
